Boris Karloff - Chung Ling Soo

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Boris Karloff speaking. I'm here with a story
for you from the files of the reader's digest who
killed Chung Ling Su. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure,
but the fate of magician Chung Ling Siou was almost
certainly no accident. The strange story begins in New York

(00:23):
sixty years ago. A certain William Ellsworth Robinson, the magician
by profession, was broke. Far less skillful men than he
were getting all the jobs, and Robinson decided to try
a desperate gamble, and so in May nineteen hundred, a
glittering eyed man with a que and flowing Oriental raiment

(00:45):
registered at a fashionable hotel in London. With him, there
traveled a diminutive, slant eyed maiden. They called themselves the
illustrious Chu Ling Sioux and his assistant Susi si But
back home in America they'd just been playing Bill and
Dotty Robinson. After just one performance at the famed Alhambra,

(01:10):
Chung Ling Sou's success was assured. Things went fine for
a time. Then into the pretender's paradise came temptation. Her
name was Estelle. He was sure that his romance was
a secret until one night he found an anonymous note
on his dressing room table. Be careful, don't forget that

(01:33):
in your bullet catching trick, your wife loads the guns.
Surely Dotty didn't suspect, or did she. It wore on
his nerves, so he decided on a divorce. He'd marry
Estelle and end this worrying and then, unbelieving, he heard
his beloved say, oh, no, Chong, I could never marry

(01:58):
any one but an American. But I am an American.
I'll prove it. Next day, dressed in Western clothes, he
called an Estelle. She stared at him, shocked. What she
saw was an undistinguished man, halting an ordinary in speech.
Where was the strange, alluring figure from the east. Miserably,

(02:20):
chung Ling Sioux confided in a friend, it's like having
two men in one body, he said. One wants a
woman that he can't have, and the other has a
woman that is afraid of. His friend was worried. I
wish you wouldn't do the bullet catching trick. To night,
he said, Well, this is the last time I'll ever
do it, promised chung Ling Sioux, and went out onto

(02:42):
the stage, the trick began as always, four spectators were
coaxed up onto the stage. Other audience members were asked
to examine the bullets, then Dotty Robinson loading the bullets
into guns. Then music Chung giving the sign five. The
curtain fell and behind it Robinson lay dead in the

(03:05):
arms of the innocent Susi. Scene Kudini made a public
statement explaining the gun trick. Normally, the bullets never left
the guns the performer carried duplicates in his mouth. But
this time the trick mechanism in the guns must have
failed to work. But Chung's friend knew that there had
been no accident, knew that Chung Ling Siu had been

(03:29):
slain on that stage by his envious other self, the
killer and the victim falling together in one body. The
sad but true story of the Wizard Chung Ling Su
is from the Reader's Digest back files, but it bears
a resemblance to an article in the current December issue

(03:49):
of the magazine, also about some wizardry. In this case,
the subject matter is more cheerful, for the wizard re
involves some fabulous automatic device which will do anything from
steering an aeroplane to keeping the snakes in the zoo happy.
The name of the article is They're Wizards on Control,

(04:11):
and I found it most interesting. I'll be joining you
soon again with more transcribed stories, but until next time,
this is Boris Karloff saying good bye.